Under the banner of “From Promises to Practice” we met and we shared our knowledge and pooled our experience… and now, three days and 40 sessions later, reflecting on 150 presentations, and our countless discussions, what have we achieved?

Water for a Growing Planet

I have been asked to address Cultural diversity. But before I sketch out some of these challenges and suggest some questions for our consideration, I want to bring in a viewpoint that has not been sufficiently heard in these proceedings to this moment.

Changing Lives

On behalf of myself and my colleagues at the BA we want to thank TWAS for having given us the possibility of welcoming you all on our premises, and to have shared these wonderful hours of thoughtful discussion and friendly camaraderie.

I have had the privilege of being friends with Dunstan Wai almost from the first day I met him. We were colleagues at the World Bank, but really started working in earnest together after the reorganization of 1987 brought the Africa region under the leadership of Kim Jaycox, with Dunstan as his assistant and myself as a director for a number of countries in west and central Africa.

We the representatives of the civil society of the five north African countries, meeting in Alexandria, Egypt from 14-16 December, 2004, would like to record our views, which we hope that the Commission on Africa will duly take into account and present to the G-8 and the EU. We are grateful to the organizers of this consultation for giving us this opportunity. We hereby record these views, and the three detailed statements prepared by our three working groups, hereby attached, should be considered an integral part of this report.